The recent Twitter chat by Sonam Kapoor as brand ambassador for L’Oréal Paris India had the hashtag #chatwithsonam trending worldwide. We look into this new trend of product promotions on Twitter.

When brand ambassadors get up, close and personal on Twitter, it’s a win-win-win situation for all the three entities – the brand, the ambassador and the fans. Gone are the days when celebrities endorsed a certain brand with a few photo shoots and some sound bytes to all the leading dailies. Fans could just about drool at the magazine spread or rush in to buy their favourite actor’s perfume or toothpaste. Now marketers ensure they get the maximum bang for their buck. In the age of social media, a brand ambassador has to go social too.

Yesterday, L’Oréal Paris India had arranged an exclusive chance to chat live with brand ambassador, Sonam Kapoor (@SonamaKapoor) for an hour on Twitter. Fans had the liberty to ask her questions related to hair colour and more. Though L’Oréal has beauty products in the range of cosmetics, skin care, hair care, hair colour, sun care and styling products for men and women, excited twitteraties were not particularly interested in all of this, but the ‘more’ bit.

The hashtag created for the Twitter chat #chatwithsonam trended here as well as worldwide. Sonam replied to tweets asking her about her favourite holiday spot, favourite book and favourite English song along with her choices in hair care products, which is anybody’s guess – hair products under the L’Oréal brand!

All’s well that ends well. L’Oréal had a whale of a time marketing its products while fans treated themselves to a personal chit-chat with their favourite actor and as for dear Sonam, she earned a little more social capital. With more than 1.6 million followers on Twitter, it will not be too long when Sonam Kapoor tops the list of Indian actors with the highest number of followers, post a few more chats like this. As per the below screenshot taken from Twitter Counter, Sonam gained 5211 followers yesterday.

But, the thing to note here is the choice of platform. Twitter is an excellent medium for both one-to-one and one-to-many conversations. If you compare Twitter with Google Plus Hangouts, Sonam could have hanged out with only 9 fans. However, on Twitter, she has been able to reach thousands, which means more value-added buzz for L’Oreal. The brand has been aggressively pushing its ‘Say yes to colour’ movement to promote its range of hair coloring cream this festive season.

Twitter chats, better than trending?

Instead of the most sought-after method to create a buzz via ‘Trending’ on Twitter with the help of influencers and their large number of followers, the brand went one step further in its promotions. Had @LOrealParisIn arranged for a Twitter contest with the hashtag ‘#SayYesToColour’ and asked fans to tweet why they would love to colour their hair this festive season, would it have created a similar buzz? I guess not!

Marketing trends on Twitter are making the big shift. Brands are making it easier for fans to reach out to their icons and the brand ambassadors are only too happy to oblige. I believe we will see more of this on Twitter, where Kajol would reply to fans how Olay makes her look younger or SRK responding to his claims about Navratna talc being ‘thanda thanda cool cool‘.